Wasting the Female Talent? Examining Gender Differences in Candidate Retention Rates

Increasing scholarly attention has been paid to understand how gender differences in political ambition, campaign effort, media coverage and voter evaluations of candidates influence women's political careers. Yet, almost all current scholarship has focused on the determinants of successful candidacy. At the same time, we have next to no knowledge of the faith of unsuccessful candidates. We argue that unsuccessful candidates matter, too. In the context where parties increasingly struggle with dropping membership numbers (Mair and Van Biezen 2001) and with limited supply of high quality candidates (Pemstein, Meserve, and Bernhard 2015), retention of existing - both electorally successful and unsuccessful - candidates is crucial. Moreover, as becoming a politician is usually a rather long endeavour, focusing only on the determinants of success of a single election might provide highly biased results as it is unable to take into account longitudinal selection effects. To address this gap in the literature, we propose a longitudinal approach to studying the gatekeeping effects on women's political representation. By investigate the conditions under which previously (un)successful candidates reappear (or do not reappear) on the ballot paper in subsequent elections, we will explore the following questions: Do comparably successful/unsuccessful women and men have the same chances of being selected as candidates in subsequent elections? Or are the parties 'letting go' of not elected politicians at a different rate, dependent of their gender? To answer these questions, we have built an original longitudinal data set on candidates who have been running for national level office during the last four rounds of general elections in Germany. We have linked the data on their electoral performance to essential information on relevant candidate characteristics (e.g., gender, age, experience, party membership, etc.). In addition, there is significant variation between German parties, both, in regard to their stance on gender equality as well as to the degree to which nomination procedures are shaped by quotas. Hence, our paper provides relevant findings for the gender equality of political competition from a supply-side perspective. While voters might already disadvantage female candidates, the playing field might be even more uneven if party gatekeepers' evaluation of candidate performance and intraparty competition is showing a gender bias.